When growing plants, e.g. cultivated for their seeds (also called seed crops) for example rice, wheat, barley, corn, soybean, canola, sunflower, millet and safflower, a major goal is to support the growth of the plant such that they produce a high yield in e.g. seeds or biomass or roots. Farmers support this growth amongst others by application of fertilisers, herbicides, pesticides, insecticides, bactericides, nematicides and/or fungicides.
In the development of these chemicals and/or biologicals for application, such as fertilisers, herbicides, pesticides, insecticides, bactericides nematicides and/or fungicides, the testing of those products and the testing of the formulations comprising those products is an important step. The screening of the effects of the application of these products and their effective amounts is traditionally done in a field setting using large amounts of plants. Accelerated systems for screening herbicide treatments were already developed as described e.g. by Stanley et al. in Forests 2014, 5, 1584-1595.
Tools for fast, accurate and efficient screening for effects of chemical and/or biological treatment on plant are a necessity for the plant growing industry. But also other types of treatment might provide the plant growing industry further insights.
Traditional methods for evaluating the effect of treatment on plants comprise a phenotyping of the plants, which involve labour-intensive procedures such as manual and visual measurements of dimensions, such as above and belowground biomass, pigments, shapes, growth, counting of plant parts, and weighing of plant parts such as individual leaves, inflorescences and seeds. Some of these operations require detaching the plant parts of interest from the subtending plant organs. Advancements in the phenotyping of plants are already available e.g. as described in WO 2010/031780 or WO 2013/001436.